Natural Disaster!!!

While Iceland at the moment has its volcanic eruption Perth on Monday afternoon experienced a violent storm like never before and the Government have declared it a natural disaster!  After a very humid sticky day the late afternoon brought a storm that smashed Perth with 120km winds, flooding rain, hail the size of golf balls plus spectacular thunder and lightning.  The damage bill expected to be in the hundreds of millions. Commuters on their way home from work were caught in the freak storm where their cars were being pummeled by golf ball size hail, leaving dents and smashed windows, 150 traffic lights were out across the city adding to the chaos and many car yards have had all their stock damaged and have declared a 'Hail Sale'.

A mudslide from the top of  Kings Park filled apartments at the bottom of the hill.  The staircase 'Jacobs Ladder' that connects Mounts Bay Road to Kings Park is severely damaged and will remain closed until further notice. Lovely original leadlight windows in University of Western Australia's Winthrop Hall were smashed from hail stones and the Architecture and Visual Arts library was flooded.  Approximately 14 schools have been closed due to extensive damage and won't reopen for several days, some hospitals cancelled elective surgery due to water damaged ceilings caving in.  60,000 homes were without electricity and many will still have none for several more days.  No blackouts at my place but my son Jesse who lives only in the next suburb has had no electricity since the storm struck.

 

The lightning was amazing and the sky immediately after the storm subsided turned a deep red/orange. The above pics are not my images but some of the many that have been circulated on the net and email. Unfortunately I am unable to acknowledge the original photographers but I applaud their skills.
There are many images available for viewing from amateur photographers and even a Facebook page has been set up for people to post images and videos, at the moment there are over 2500 images and 133 videos already posted....so if you are a little bored and need to kill an hour or two take a look.

In the midst of all this my little house and area remained pretty much unscathed...no damage to report.  When the storm hit I was at my sister's and we watched from the window my car being pelted with hail but fortunately no dents for me ( Eva was not so lucky, her car is covered in dents) I waited at Kerry's for the storm to pass and then drove home in calmness...I think I actually beat the storm to my suburb as it looked like there had not even been any rain at that stage, but not long after arriving home it started with wind, rain thunder and lightning but no hailstones here.

This is my amateur video taken from my front porch as you can see it was fairly mild at my place compared to others.

Amazingly no one was injured even the Thornlie Tree Man survived the storm, he has been up a tree outside his home for the last 106 days trying to save it from being cut down by the shire as they have declared it unsafe.  However the tree also survived the storm intact so maybe the council need to reconsider their decision.  The tree man was up the tree before I left for Iceland and I was absolutely amazed that he was still there when I returned some 8 weeks later.  Even though I think he is a bit crazy, I hope he wins his fight, society needs this type of crazy sometimes.